[new music] APOTHEOSIS : DEVIATIONS released

Apotheosis was written in early 2006 for solo 5 string electric piccolo fretless bass as the finale for my first real 30 minute solo bass set.

It was among 3 or 4 solo pieces I would play live, but intentionally not record.

I used to like the idea of having solo pieces that people could only hear at my shows. Apotheosis was always the closer.

Of course, just because I didn’t want to record the Apotheosis in the studio, didn’t stop video of it’s live performance from being recorded. Eventually, I posted a video of Apotheosis from a live performance on YouTube.

To my dismay, it became the most viewed Jeff Schmidt Solo Bass video, dwarfing the views received by what I considered to be my more musically substantive pieces. Ok. So there’s no accounting for taste on YouTube. Or maybe there is. Who am I to judge? I just hit strings and make sound. Anyway – I love the comments on the video too – the back and forth that goes on is often pretty hilarious. I guess I’m grateful people give a shit at all!

Recently, I made the decision to get back into releasing music, including solo material, and thought it’s time to get Apotheosis properly recorded. The challenge was learning to play it again. I’ve literally stopped playing bass like that in the last few years so working through it gave me blisters again. So. Lame.

I didn’t want to release it as a single – so the idea of giving it the re-mix treatment sounded like a cool way to bring new life to it and round out a nice little EP.

This newly recorded solo bass version is compositionally very similar to the YouTube video version, but features a few changes I wanted to make at the bridge and ending.

TRK 2: APOTHEOSIS – DERISION

When I first thought about remixing Apotheosis, this is pretty much what I heard in my head. Instead of trying to orchestrate the entire original with additional instrumentation, or just slap a beat underneath it – my approach here was to pick only a few bits of the original piece, twist them up while keeping them recognizable and building a new track around those.

TRK 3: APOTHEOSIS – DELIRIUM

Technically this isn’t a “remix” as it doesn’t use any of the original track as source material. So let’s call it a “re-imagining”. I re-imagined Apotheosis at half tempo with half the notes, played it on the same bass under the influence of sodium pentathol. I took that and fleshed it out with additional instrumentation. It descends into a dark & moody ambient second half where I used the Resonator bass for all kinds of weird slightly nightmarish soundscapes.

TRK 4: APOTHEOSIS – CARNAGE

Very little is recognizable from the original track in this version. But, nearly every sound heard was made by putting the recording of Apotheosis it into a sampler and processing it. The obviously acoustic drums are actual drums, but everything else (including the big blast drum) are sounds made from processing the original solo bass track in a sampler and smacking keys on my keyboard. I’ll have to make a video to show how this was done. Oh – it’s also in 13/8. Try to keep up.

TRK 5: APOTHEOSIS – LIMBO

I knew I wanted to do an ambient treatment for Apotheosis. I thought I had it covered with the second half of the Delirium Mix, but that wasn’t really made FROM the original recording, so it wasn’t a re-mix. This dark ambient version is made entirely from processing the original recording.

TRK 6: APOTHEOSIS – ADAPTATION

Even though Apotheosis was written for 5 string fretless piccolo bass – after all the other remixes were finished I pulled out my 4 string acoustic resonator bass with really crappy action and wondered if I could do a version of Apotheosis on it. Short answer – of course. This version is in the “spirit of” Apotheosis. It sounds like it belongs to the same family, but it’s probably the younger hippy brother that’s always camping and getting high.

TRK 7: APOTHEOSIS – DEFENESTRATION

I wish I could take credit for this one – but this track was created by Russ Sitka. I put a challenge out here on the blog for people to remix Apotheosis for this project. The requirement was it has to be good and oh yeah, you’ve got about 3 weeks. Russ came through with this jem! It reminds me of really cool indie video game music – in that it makes me want to run around killing zombie demon unicorn invaders from Cygnus X-1

Here’s Russ’ description of his track.

One thing that I really like about the original tune is the energy of the composition, especially for a solo fretless piece. I found it to have certain ‘heaviness’ that sounds like nothing else I’ve heard and I chose to expand upon that as the focus for my take. By splitting the tune into an ensemble and using some aggressive effects, I wanted to give the impression of the music having so much energy that it is bursting at the digital seams. I’m pretty sure if Zeus played bass this is what it would sound like.

Thanks for the killer track Russ! Reach out to Russ for bass, and production – sitruss @ gmail dot com

The whole thing clocks in at just about 25 minutes – perfect for a little headphone listening session – don’t ya think? Of course!

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5 Comments

Janis09-11-2012

Just bought it — and as anticipated, my own need to pay rent and keep body and soul together have made the piano adaptation take too damn long. Still moving forward on it, although on a geologic timescale. I need a winning lottery ticket. Or a senile 90 year old oil baron, but those damn Texas lap dancers keep snapping them up.